4 comments:

There's a second version of Anchorman II coming out next week. They claim it has 800 different jokes. The first Anchorman was rewritten and reshot so extensively that they released a different version as an extra on DVD, containing the original second half of the movie. Makes you think about how little story matters. It should, but I guess we've all learned to accept that it doesn't. Whenever you hear about some action blockbuster getting a new ending you think, "Well, so much for foreshadowing." (Although you get the sense that most reshot blockbusters get a new ending that comes after the ending they already have, rather than replacing it. The Enterprise crashes into San Francisco AND THEN Khan crawls out of the wreckage and Spock chases him across the network of arbitrary flying things. Arnold drops a shipping container on James Caan BUT CAAN lives and gets tried and released on a technicality (with a little cast on his arm) and gets in a limo, but Arnold is the driver, and he parks it in front of a train. Die Another Day was suppose to end with the destruction of the villain's lair -- the ice hotel -- and all the stuff with the 747 was added very late in the game. The second-to-last Die Hard ended about four times. Will Smith got mad at people for saying he was reshooting Wild Wild West -- when he was reshooting Wild Wild West -- because, he insisted, they weren't reshots, they were additional scenes.

Have you guys seen The Limey? There are so many wonderful things about it, and one of them is when you get to the ending you think -- yes, that's the ending. That makes sense. Everything was leading up to that.

I rented The Limey on videotape. That's how long it's been, but I loved it.

Now since I've been reading Richard Rohmer, I am very aware of facts and that claim about Anchorman 2 having 800 new, different jokes means that works out to what - 10 a minute? How is that even possible? Unless you give points for jokes that run "200 guys walk into a bar and ask the 15 bartenders...."